Moses and DeGroot families photographs

Louis Moses (1930-) was born on 9 February 1930 in Rikswijk, the Netherlands to Froukje (née Hoogstraal, later Vos) and Siemon Moses. Louis had one sister, Engeline. After the Germans invaded the Netherlands in 1940, Louis’s parents sent him into hiding with a Christian family in The Hague. After the neighborhood was deemed unsafe, he was moved to a new family where he was reunited with his mother. They remained there for around a year, and then were moved to a new house in Rijswijk with a family who had built an underground shelter. Louis’s father was also able to join them. In October 1943, Siemon was beaten and arrested by the police, and then turned over to the Germans. He was sent to a Dutch concentration camp where he perished. Louis and his mother moved from this location, and continued to hide in several more houses. Their last hiding place was with a Dutch painter. After liberation, Louis and his mother moved back to Rijswijk where they were reunited with his sister. He married Elly van Leeuwen in 1949, and they moved to Israel. They had two children there, Judith and Jim. The family immigrated to the United States in 1957, where Louis worked in the hospitality industry.

Elly Rachel van Leeuwen (later Elly Moses, 1931-) was born on 7 August 1931 in The Hague to Judith DeGroot and Isaac van Leeuwen. Her father owned a bicycle and small appliance shop. Her younger sister Rachel (Chellie) was born in 1936. In 1941, Isaac volunteered to go to the Westerbork transit camp, believing that if he went his family would not be harmed. He was later deported and perished in the Monowitz concentration camp (Auschwitz III). In 1942 Judith placed her two daughters in hiding and spent the rest of the war working as a weapons courier for the Dutch resistance using false papers. Chellie, using the false name Loesje Frederiks, was placed with a Catholic family in Limburg. Elly was hidden first with a lawyer and then on a farm. She was then moved to the home of a family in Middleburg, whom also shared the last name of van Leeuwen. Another Jewish girl was also hiding there. One day the home was raided and the second older girl was rounded up. Elly was then moved to the home of Johannes and Katarina Maria den Hollander in Middleburg on Walcheren Island. She lived with them and their two sons Cornelias Johannes (Cees) and Jan Jacob for a year and a half. After some neighbors suspected that the den Hollanders were sheltering a Jewish child, they sent her to the home of a female children’s books author in Utrecht. Elly lived with her for three weeks until it was safe to return to the den Hollanders. The den Hollanders home was liberated in 1944, but Elly remained with them until all of Holland was free in May 1945. After the war, Judith worked as a prison warden for female collaborators. In 1950 Elly married Louis Moses, another child survivor and moved to Israel. They briefly lived in Chulia, a primarily Dutch kibbutz in northern Israel and then moved to Haifa. In 1956 they returned to the Netherlands and the following February immigrated to the United States.

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, Gift of Judith Carrig.

Donated to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum by Judith Carrig in April 2016.